This is a really important observation. Many people learn to define transmisogyny as specifically “calling trans women men,” so easily miss or ignore the way transmisogyny also takes the form of hypercriticism and over-punishment. https://twitter.com/ladleye/status/1249494597052612609

There’s a process that has played out many, many times in many areas of the internet, and offline as well, which goes something like this:

–a trans woman will do something genuinely worthy of criticism, but it could be just a discourse misstep, not being very educated on something, or could be all the way up to actual mistreatment of someone else

–the criticism will happen but it will be disproportionate, and may include calls to ostracize or otherwise punish her that reach the level of cruelty

–she or some other trans women will point out that the response is excessive and implies a transmisogynistic double standard

–the retroactive narrative will end up being “you are using accusations of transmisogyny to deflect criticism”

–this happens enough that people learn to associate the very concept of transmisogyny with deflection of criticism

Just so it’s clear, no I’m not saying this has been the pattern with every trans woman who’s been subject to criticism, and I’m not saying criticisms of trans women are necessarily invalid.

But this process happens enough that it’s now something we can reasonably expect, and it demonstrates how consistently transmisogyny relies on

–vilification
–characterizing transfems as manipulative
–framing the idea of transmisogyny as an unfair tool transfems use to cheat